The following disclosure relates to a power distribution architecture for data centers.
Computers have become widely adopted for various applications, for both personal and corporate uses. Some computers operate as stand-alone data processing equipment, with perhaps a peripheral such as a printer and a display device. Although such stand-alone systems are useful for many purposes, additional features and benefits may be achieved if multiple computers are networked together to share information and resources.
The popularity and simplicity of sharing information over networks, such as the Internet, has resulted in demand for data processing and storage capacity to support high network traffic volumes. Computer data centers, facilities that house hundreds or thousands of computers that are networked together to provide various computer-based services, can help to meet this demand. In the context of the Internet, a data center may provide processing, storage, and support functions that improve performance or enhance the utility of the Internet. Data centers may also be deployed in other contexts. Financial institutions, for example, may employ one or more data centers to store financial account and transaction information.
A data center may provide data processing and storage capacity. In operation, a data center may be connected to a network, and may receive and respond to various requests from the network to retrieve, process, and/or store data. In addition to extensive data processing and data storage capabilities, data centers typically support high speed data transfer and routing capabilities. To meet future network demands, data center computing capacity may continue to increase.